


the sleep in your eyes

by 1eyedwombat



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Garashir If You Squint, Gen, M/M, hey julian guess what garak cares about you, pre-slash/good friends, probably ooc garak, set early season 6 aboard the Defiant, sleep-deprived julian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 16:46:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18265373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1eyedwombat/pseuds/1eyedwombat
Summary: “I don’t want to be tired anymore. It’s exhausting.”It's a hard war, and everyone has to do their part.





	the sleep in your eyes

It was 0500 when Julian’s hands started shaking. 

 

Which, really, was impressive unto itself. When his parents had traded him into the doctor for a system update, his hand-eye coordination had been near-perfected. But not quite enough, he mused, to outlast this degree of sleep-deprivation. 

 

Not that he couldn’t handle working long nights and early mornings. But this wasn’t Julian’s first all-nighter in a row, or his second. After that, however, he couldn’t be certain. Surely he had slept somewhere in these past few days, it was just that things were a little muddled around in his head at the moment. Which was also fairly impressive (and a tad concerning) because, once again, genetic enhancements. 

 

There wasn’t time for anything like exhaustion or shaking hands or scrambled thoughts right now, though, because this was War. And during a War, especially one like this, everyone had to pull more than their weight and everyone had to give everything they had until their legs fell out from beneath them and they had to be dragged back to the infirmary, where Julian was supposed to fix them. Where he was supposed to give them a stern look and firmly tell them to Not Do That Again, all the while missing sleep himself. 

 

And now that Julian’s secret was out, now that everyone knew he was a Freak and a Monster and something dragged out of some of the bloodiest pages of history, he had to give more. There would be no more fake yawns after a double shift, no more pretend stress headaches when work piled up beyond what he should have been able to handle. Now he could keep going, could treat the endless waves of battered crewman and nobody would tell him to stop, because nobody knew his limits. 

 

He didn’t know his limits. He never got the chance to learn them.

 

But there wasn’t space for limitations in War, there was only perseverance. And right now, there was only refilling the hyposprays, carefully formulating the drugs in advance, so that they’d be ready for the casualties of tomorrow. Julian found it was much more efficient this way, predicting the broken arms and pierced lungs with morbid dispassion. He hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to project future fatalities, to calculate those he couldn’t save and those who would be dead before they reached him. 

 

Snap. Slide. Hiss. Next. It was ritualistic, methodical, even if the liquid inside trembled with his hands. Snap. Slide. Hiss. Next. Snap. Slide. Hiss-

 

“Good morning, Doctor.”

 

Julian jumped and dropped his hypo. It made a deafening clatter against the ground and he stared at it blankly for a moment. That shouldn’t have happened. He rarely jumped. He never dropped things (except on purpose). He didn’t. He 

“Doctor?” 

 

Oh right, someone was there. Someone—Garak—that was Garak’s voice, wasn’t it, and he  _ so _ did not have the energy for this.

 

He turned around, folding his hands behind his back to still them. “Garak. What can I help you with?” 

 

Garak smiled, slow and slippery and a little bit like oil (and oh, would Julian have loved to crack that facade open if only he weren’t so  _ tired _ ). 

 

“Apologies, Doctor. I didn’t mean to startle you,” and Julian could have laughed because of  _ course _ he did. 

 

“Right, it’s no problem, I just, that is you just caught me a little off guard is all,” Julian tried for a smile, “What brings you here?” 

 

Garak ignored his question again as he browsed around. And really, this was getting to be a bit much. Garak was mystic at the best of times, but silence wasn’t his style. He was much more the type to chatter on and on, leading you around for hours until eventually you realized you hadn’t gotten anywhere. 

 

“Doctor.”

 

Julian snapped back to reality to find Garak standing much closer to him. The Cardassian tilted his head minutely and peered up at him, still smiling but with a sharp edge of something serious in his eyes. And oh, they were  _ blue _ weren’t they. Kind of grey too, that was nice. Julian tried to mentally shake the fog out of his head. Eyes? Really?

 

“Yes? What is it, Garak? I’m really quite busy, so if you can’t tell me why you’re here, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to-” Julian tried to take a step back but ended up stumbling towards his tray of hyposprays. Unbalanced, he felt the world tilt and felt a keen sense of  _ oh this isn’t right _ before a hand latched onto his arm.

 

“Are you feeling alright, Dr. Bashir?” Garak’s face came into focus, and oh, there was concern there. Julian tried to shrug out of his grip, but Garak didn’t relent. 

 

“I’m fine, thank you, I just… long shift, is all.” 

 

Garak didn’t release him, and Julian suddenly felt the weight of the past few days crash down on him. All he wanted was to sit down. All he wanted was to  _ stop _ , just for one second, just to breathe for a little bit. He dropped his head and took a deep breath.

 

“I’m just so… tired,” he glanced back at Garak, who said nothing, just continued to regard him with those damned eyes, “I don’t want to be tired anymore. It’s exhausting.”

 

Garak raised an eye ridge and stepped back, leaving Julian feeling terribly alone. He stepped past him and scooped up the forgotten hypo, setting it gently on the tray. 

 

“Don’t you think, my dear Doctor, that it’s high time you took a shift or two off? After all,” Garak glanced at the clock, “isn’t Dr. T’ssel scheduled to come in soon?” 

 

Julian checked the time. 0558. Well, he had to hand it to Garak for punctuality. Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that he should be questioning how Garak knew the infirmary shifts so well, but that seemed incredibly unimportant at the moment. 

 

“I… I have to finish these hypos, and then there’s the senior staff meeting at 0800, which means I’ll need to write up some reports before then about the…,” Garak came up behind him and placed a hand on his back. 

 

“I’ll make your excuses. Now, Doctor, if you will?” 

 

Julian should have fought, but the thought of a bed seemed really quite attractive at the moment, and he could just hand in those reports later. It wasn’t like there was anything urgent in them, just some inventory and figures and other depressing news.

 

While he was contemplating the merits of a break, Garak trundled him out the door and past Dr. T’ssel, who regarded him impassively through her dark eyes. Yeah, she had a hold of things over here. Garak escorted him through the halls and to his own quarters, nodding politely at the door before heading off towards the bridge.

 

It wasn’t until Julian was near-passed out on top of his covers that he vaguely remembered that Garak had never told him why he came to Sickbay.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt courtesy of dialogue-prompts on tumblr. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
